Stopped and Starting (again)

Wow, talk about your stops and starts. I talked of that in my last entry--back at the beginning of June. I sure do have the stopping part down. Here it is late October, and it's high time I added some life in here.

It's not that there has been a lack of activity here in Vacaville. Just the opposite, and that's why I haven't been writing in here lately. After getting through all that needs to get done on any given day, there just doesn't seem to be much energy left for writing. Especially since doing a lot of writing is usually one of the items on the to-do list! (I'll elaborate on that later.)

So I'm just going to go through a recap of everything that's been going on with me since June. I think I left off while still in the planning stages for the BlauJeans project. I worked on that through around the end of July, and I think I came up with some pretty cool maps and CG graphics. That got my 3D graphics blood up, and I set off on a quest to build some of the architecture of San Francisco from before the 1906 earthquake & fire. So I spent one day walking all over the city taking pictures of various buildings in the financial district and SOMA area. That was a blast, and I did manage to build a pretty good rendition of the Spreckles Building (commonly known as the Call Tower). You can check out some samples of it on this page.

Then the Dialogue project came along, which was to provide text treatments for a documentary film by Mike Garibaldi-Frick. It was a very inspirational piece, and hopefully it will be playing on the festival circuit soon.

The amount of work that these projects represented was something unusual for me in that it was what I would consider a light workload. I haven't had a light workload since back in the 20th century! Usually I'm scrambling and juggling to get work done for a bunch of different clients and a bunch of different projects. But after the LucasFilm project ended in June, I decided I wanted to take a little time to stop and smell the roses, and...have a life! So Mary and I went to the Silent Film Festival in July, I went to SIGGRAPH in San Diego in August, and Mary and I have been catching up on some of our DVD watching.

Another fun aspect of this having a life stuff involved trying to increase my fitness level. So I've been riding my bike more, watching my food intake, and I've lost about 30 pounds since May as a result. My goal is to get back up to the mountains to go skiing this winter. I haven't been for over a decade, and I used to go pretty much every other weekend! So that's my goal.

And speaking of returning to activities I hadn't done in a while, the summer of 2007 marked my return to the game of golf! I used to play a lot, and even played in a corporate league back at Link Flight Simulation. But after a back injury in 1991, I pretty much dropped out of the sport. The last time I played at all was in 1994. But at the end of June of this year, I was at my brother-in-law's retirement party, and I had a chance to watch him play for a bit, and the bug bit me hard. So the next week I dragged my clubs out to the local course and went to the driving range. I took a lesson, tried some short rounds, then I had a chance to try hitting with my brother's clubs. I was amazed at the difference. The clubs I had been using were handed down to me by my brother when I was still in high school. Well, I looked them up online, and it turns out they were made in 1962! So I decided it was time to upgrade to some newer technology, and I bought a used set of Taylor-Made Burner irons. Well, that helped my game quite a bit, and since then I have added a couple of new hybrids, and some used Cobra titanium drivers. So now the only club I still have from my previous set is my old putter!

So I played a lot over the summer, and I'm really enjoying it. I've played with my brother up at Plumas Lake (where I played my very first round back in high school), but mostly I've been playing at Green Tree in Vacaville. I've had some bad rounds, but overall my game has been perking up and I'm having a lot of fun at it.

But even with all that, I found I still had some free time. So I signed up for a class at Solano Community College. I'd always wanted to take a film class, and they were offering one over the summer called "The Art of Cinema". It was a history of the industry, discussions on techniques, genres, etc. I loved the class! We would get about an hour of lecture, then get to watch a film. I'd have to write a discussion on the film, but I love doing that kind of critical analysis. Well, I had great fun in the class, and I really liked the instructor. So I was talking with him after the final exam, and asked if he was doing any other film classes. He said he was teaching a screenwriting class in the fall, and suggested I give it a try.

Well, I've had a long list of classes and subjects I'd like to take and study, and screenwriting was either way down on the list or not on there at all. But I decided what the heck. So now I'm just a little halfway through the term, and it has been an amazing experience. It's been a lot of work, but I really enjoy it! So far I've written a PSA, a video game, a television episode, a documentary...and now we are doing our big project--a full two hour movie script! And I came up with what I think is a doozy. I am really having fun getting into it, complete with all the research. I think I might actually have a shot with this in some screenplay competitions after this is all over! Or at least, I'm figuring on giving it a shot.

That's the real reason I haven't been writing much on this blog--I've been typing my fingers down to bloody stumps with all the homework.

So currently I am working on my movie screenplay, and working on a documentary about the Mark Twain book "The Innocents Abroad". And I am about halfway done with my workcenter that I am building for my woodworking. I designed it myself, and it is a combination router base, set of drawers and cabinets, a power breakout box and workshop kill switch, and so much more!

That's me, I guess...I just can't seem to sit around and do nothing! So I'm trying to do a little bit of everyting...